Boston Celtics, American professional basketball team based in Boston, Massachusetts. One of the most successful franchises in sports history, the Celtics won 11 of 13 National Basketball Association (NBA) championships from 1957 to 1969. Overall, they have won 17 NBA titles.

Founded in Boston in 1946 by Walter Brown, the Celtics were charter members of the Basketball Association of America, a forerunner of the NBA (established in 1949). At the time of the team’s founding, Brown also managed the Boston Garden, on whose distinctive parquet court the green-and-white-clad Celtics thrived until the franchise moved to a new arena, now known as TD Garden, in 1995–96. The team posted a losing record in each of its first four seasons, which prompted the hiring of head coach Red Auerbach in 1950.

The Celtics’ run as a sports dynasty began in the mid-1950s under Auerbach, who later served as the team’s general manager and president. The team won its first title in the 1956–57 season after defeating the St. Louis Hawks in a closely contested final series, which included a double-overtime deciding seventh game. With a lineup of Hall of Famers that included Frank Ramsey, Ed Macauley, Bill Sharman, ball-handling wizard Bob Cousy, Tom Heinsohn, dominating centre Bill Russell (five times the league’s Most Valuable Player), and later Sam Jones, K.C. Jones, and John Havlicek, the “Celts” won eight consecutive NBA titles between 1958–59 and 1965–66—a record for the four major North American team sports—and triumphed again in 1967–68 and 1968–69.

Bob Cousy (right), 1962.

AP

Bill Russell, mid-1960s.

Dick Raphael

Boston’s ascent coincided with the postwar proliferation of television sets in the United States, helping the team and its players become iconic figures as the sport’s national profile grew. Among the highlights of the Celtics’ unprecedented championship run are Russell twice gathering an NBA finals-record 40 rebounds in a game (1960, 1962) and Havlicek’s series-clinching steal of an inbounds pass in game seven of the 1965 Eastern Division finals, which elicited the famous call of “Havlicek stole the ball!” by announcer Johnny Most. The matchups between Russell, who served as the Celtics’ player-coach from 1966 to 1969 and Wilt Chamberlain, first as a Philadelphia 76er and then with the Los Angeles Lakers, were at the centre of some of the most dramatic games in NBA play-off history.

Havlicek was still a key contributor, along with Dave Cowens, Paul Silas, and Jo Jo White, on teams coached by Heinsohn that won titles in 1973–74 and 1975–76. The second of those championships included a dramatic triple-overtime victory over the Phoenix Suns in game five of the finals. In 1978 the Celtics were involved in an unusual transaction after the NBA blocked the team’s owner, Irv Levin, from moving the franchise to his native California. Instead, Levin and John Y. Brown, owner of the Buffalo Braves, traded franchises. That same year Boston acquired one of the greatest players in league history—and arguably the most beloved Celtic of all time—when they selected sharpshooting forward Larry Bird in the NBA draft. The NBA reached new levels of popularity with the excitement generated by the supremacy battle between the Lakers led by Magic Johnson and a Celtics team led by Bird (who had a rivalry with Johnson dating back to their college days), Robert Parish, Kevin McHale, and Dennis Johnson that advanced to the NBA finals five times in the 1980s and won championships in 1980–81, 1983–84, and 1985–86.

John Havlicek.

Focus on Sport/Getty Images

In the mid-1990s the Celtics experienced the first prolonged play-off drought in the franchise’s history—six straight years beginning with the 1995–96 season. When the Celtics returned to the postseason, they often lost in the early rounds. This changed during the 2007–08 season when the Celtics made the greatest single-season turnaround in NBA history, finishing with the league’s best record and posting a 42-win improvement after the off-season addition of superstars Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen to a team that already included perennial all-star Paul Pierce. They advanced to the NBA finals, where they defeated the rival Lakers for a ninth time and won the 17th title in franchise history. The two franchises again won their respective conference championships and faced off for the NBA title in the 2009–10 season, with the Lakers winning the championship in seven games.

As the Celtics’ veteran roster grew older, the team had reduced on-court success. Allen left in free agency in 2012, and the team traded away Garnett and Pierce after the 2012–13 campaign in an effort to spur a rebuilding process centred around younger players. That effort bore fruit much faster than many observers expected, as the Celtics returned to the play-offs in 2014–15.

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A professional basketball team based in Boston, Mass., the Celtics rank among the most successful franchises in sports history. They won 11 of 13 National Basketball Association (NBA) championships from 1957 to 1969. Overall, they have won 17 NBA titles.